Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS): 90 GHz Telescope Pointing, Beam Profile, Window Function, and Polarization Performance

Abstract

The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) is a telescope array that observes the cosmic microwave background (CMB) over ∼ 75% of the sky from the Atacama Desert, Chile, at frequency bands centered near 40, 90, 150, and 220GHz. CLASS measures the large angular scale (θ ≳ 1◦) CMB polarization to constrain the tensor-to-scalar ratio and the optical depth to last scattering. This paper presents the optical characterization of the 90GHz telescope, which has been observing since July 2018. Observations of the Moon establish the pointing while dedicated observations of Jupiter are used for beam calibration. The standard deviations of the pointing error in azimuth, elevation, and boresight angle are 1.3′, 2.1′, and 2.0′, respectively, over the first three years of observations. This corresponds to a pointing uncertainty ∼ 7% of the beam’s full width at half maximum (FWHM). The effective azimuthally-symmetrized 1D beam estimated at 90GHz from per detector intensity beam maps has a FWHM of 0.614 ± 0.003◦ and a solid angle of 136.3 ± 0.6(stats.)±1.1(sys.)µsr integrated to a radius of 4◦. The corresponding beam window function drops to b²ℓ = 0.92, 0.70, 0.14 at ℓ = 30, 100, 300, respectively, with relative uncertainties < 2% for ℓ < 200. Far-sidelobes are studied using detector-centered intensity maps of the Moon and measured to be at a level of 10⁻³ or below relative to the peak. The polarization angle of Tau A estimated from preliminary survey maps is 149.6 ± 0.2(stats.)◦ in equatorial coordinates consistent with prior measurements. Instrumental temperature-to-polarization (T → P) leakage is measured at a 95% confidence upper limit of (1.7±0.1)×10⁻³ in single detector demodulated data using observations of Jupiter and the Moon. Using pair-differenced demodulated data, a 95% confidence upper limit of 3.6×10⁻⁴ is obtained on the T → P leakage.